SOBA AGM and Housekeeping

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Hello members,

It’s nearly that time of year again – AGM time! I can’t believe it’s come around so quickly, but time has been sneaking forward while we’ve all been drinking a few pints.

Before I cover the AGM, there are a few housekeeping details I’d like to address.

I’ve received a few emails asking what happened to the SOBA email updates. The answer is that we’ve tried to focus our communications with members by keeping everything in the one place – the SOBA website. All news is now posted there. You can subscribe to this via RSS (http://www.soba.org.nz/feed) to ensure that you never miss a post. While some have expressed that they will miss the email updates, email technology is creaking these days with the ongoing spam war, and we feel it’s better to post everything where it can easily be referenced rather than risk losing it to spam filters and dealing with bouncing “mailbox full” etc. messages. I hope you all understand.

Secondly, SOBA has been trying for a while now to forge closer relationships with brewers, so as to provide more timely information on new beers, and other interesting information to our members, while giving the brewers an easy path to reach out to SOBA if we can help them in any way. To this end, we’re working on establishing a network of BROs – Brewery Relationship Officers. Yes, we like tongue-in-cheek names; after all, we’re called SOBA! Anyway, if you think you’d enjoy being the “go to guy” in SOBA who will serve as the point of contact for a given brewery, please contact the BRO coordinator, David Wood (bro@soba.org.nz) and we’ll work it from there. Likewise, if you ARE a brewer, and have someone you’d specifically like to be your liaison with SOBA, please let David know.

Our AGM is, once again, taking place during Beervana Weekend on Saturday morning, August 18th at 10am. The Fork and Brewer have kindly offered us their facilities, and there will be SOBA-provided bacon butties for all who turn up, as well as a bus for those who are going to the afternoon Beervana session afterwards. We realise that we’re competing with a certain brewery’s breakfast event here, and we know that AGMs aren’t always particularly interesting, but they ARE important, so please consider attending despite your inevitable hangovers!

A number of committee members are stepping down this year. Rob Owen is resigning from the presidency and not standing again for committee. Kieran Haslett-Moore is stepping down, and I am also resigning as Secretary, having served every year except 2010. I will be standing again for general committee.  We would really like fresh vision and perhaps more regional representation, so if you’d consider standing, please send nominations to secretary@soba.org.nz. A list of nominations will be published on the website, as well as brief biographies of those standing.

We will be attempting to keep the AGM as brief as possible, and we are also working on streaming it online for those who are unable to make it. Updates will be posted on the website.

Cheers,

Greig McGill
Secretary
Society of Beer Advocates (SOBA) Inc.